


When None Can Call Our Power To Account

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Containment (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 15:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7443589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not infected. Yet he cannot wash the blood from his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When None Can Call Our Power To Account

He’d never dreamed, when he first started working with Macintyre, that things would turn out this way, that he would be Public Enemy Number 1 across Atlanta, and Macintyre and Lommers would have a part in it.

Cannerts scrubbed at his hands until they were red and raw. He hadn’t been infected; he wasn’t having the hallucinations he’d witnessed in Katie Frank, yet he still perceived his hands as being stained with blood as Lady Macbeth did. The blood of so many nameless, faceless people he had never known and now would never know, the blood of the Syrian man wrongly named and vilified in the news as being Patient Zero, the blood of Dr Sanders, the co-worker he’d worked so closely with, and the blood of Katie Frank, initially just the teacher he was pulled in to deal with for the field trip when Dr Sanders went AWOL, then the woman he feared was going to expose his involvement in the virus, and finally the woman whose bravery in the face of certain impending death had made him realise he had to come clean about his role in the outbreak.

He’d wanted it to happen where he got the chance to explain what really happened, to be able to tell people on his own terms. And he’d wanted the opportunity to explain to his family himself before they heard it from the media. Instead, Sabine Lommers had gone public with her version of events, a version that threw the blame on Cannerts entirely, washing the blood from her hands in a way that Cannerts would never be able to again. He could only imagine how he was being referred to outside the cordon, where they only had access to Lommers’s bullshit version, where all believed him entirely responsible for the outbreak. And as Cannerts watched Jake Riley try to comfort Quentin Frank, struggling to find the words for Quentin when he clearly needed comfort himself, as he watched Thomas become angry and frustrated when he realised that his “superpower” hadn’t worked at all, there was a part of him that agreed with all the people out there baying for his blood.

He didn’t want to know what his family were thinking as they watched the broadcast. In one way it was a relief for him to be trapped behind the cordon, not having to watch the faces of his parents and knowing how disappointed and ashamed they were. And another part of him was relieved not to have to face that man, the man he had always regarded as a second father figure, his wife who had opened her home to him, because he didn’t even know what to say to them after they had thrown him to the wolves. Why wouldn’t he help them when Dr MacIntyre had been responsible for getting him to where he was today? They’d just have to stay locked away for 48 hours, then the outbreak would be over, and he could return to his daily life, reputation intact. Then as time went by and it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, he still held out hope that he would be able to find a cure, and he still thought everything would be okay. Even when Katie and Jake started questioning exactly when Dr Sanders had become sick, he still thought it could be managed. But now he dared not leave the hospital for the streets of Atlanta, where the riots so recently defused were likely to escalate again should anyone catch a glimpse of him. 

Much as part of him wanted to stay hidden away, there was another part of him that wanted to tell his story to the world, just as Katie had hoped he would do, to get his side of the story out there. Yet he knew there was no defence for not destroying the virus when he had the chance, for allowing it into the hospital, for all the destruction it had caused, there was nothing he could say that would make anything right for anyone ever again.

He scrubbed at the blood on his hands, not even noticing that the blood had become real.


End file.
